While the concept of social media scheduling seems straightforward enough, the reality is that the process involves a wide variety of options to choose from.
If you manage or run your own brand or business, maintaining a presence on social media can more often than not feel like a waste of your time. However, as our day to day lives increasingly shift online, it’s more important than ever to stay relevant in the digital space as a means to craft a consistent message that matches the tone of your business.
Since more than four billion people around the world are using social media across everyday activities, it’s safe to say that this trend is here to stay. On top of that, these four billion users distribute their screen time across an average of 6.6 social media platforms or apps per month. However, if you’re a business trying to capture the attention of at least some of those four billion people, it’s understandable that brands can easily get overwhelmed with navigating social media for the purpose of effectively marketing themselves.
When crafting a social media strategy, it’s usually a lot more complex and time consuming than people initially think. Between creating the right types of content, deciding on which platform to post it to and actually posting it, this doesn’t even include the time you need to dedicate to responding and engaging with your followers, and reviewing your analytics to see if your efforts are working. Thankfully, social media scheduling is a means to help manage your time effectively – but what is it, and how does it work?
Three Ways To Conquer Social Media Scheduling
Most digital marketers will tell you about the importance of timing. You may be posting some top notch content, but if you aren’t paying much attention to your social media analytics – none of your followers are seeing it. By posting when they are most active, which might be 8:00 pm on a Thursday night, you’re already giving your engagement levels a significant boost.
However, not many business owners have the time to drop everything to post something on social media at the time frame that offers the best shot at getting seen. This is not a new problem though, which is why social media scheduling was invented in the first place. Social media scheduling is the term used to describe the automated upload of new posts to social media platforms, on particular dates or times of the day. With fewer distractions, it’s a means for marketers and business owners to free up their time and rest easy knowing that their social media calendar is already taken care of – but what are the options for doing so?
Manual Scheduling Per Platform – Social media scheduling is available on most social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even LinkedIn. Each platform has its own unique form of social media scheduling, allowing users to store content and automate their socials. However, the downside of this is that there’s no way to streamline your content and cross post between channels, except Facebook and Instagram. As a result, it can cut down on the time social media marketing demands, but is still not the most efficient method.
Use A Social Media Scheduling Tool – Thankfully, there is a huge range of both free and paid online social media scheduling tools that can automate your posts across many channels. Some only offer options for all platforms, while others stick to the main players like Facebook. The most popular scheduling tools that we’ve discovered include Hootsuite, Buffer and Later, which can help to manage your content across multiple platforms. However, the downsides of using these can include paid subscriptions, and no human eye to catch any potential mistakes.
Enlist An Agency To Do It For You – If you’re looking to combine the automation of social media scheduling tools with the personal touch of a real human double checking your content, then enlisting the services of a social media marketing agency offers the best of both worlds. For those really looking to give their socials an overhaul, the right agency will also help you with your brand’s content marketing requirements, and effectively kill two birds with one stone to help you make your mark online.
If not actioned properly and without a well thought out plan of attack, marketing on social media can result in a lot of work with minimal results. If you lack the time, energy or resources to give this the proper attention that it deserves, it might be worth considering outsourcing the work required to the professionals – but where do you find them?
The Key To Finding Success On Social Media Is Great Content
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as social media posts, blog articles, videos and even animated Instagram stories.
We believe that this model means we can produce high quality content in faster than normal delivery times. It also means that because you have a monthly credit, you are going to want to make sure you use these up – and so do we – meaning that your digital content is always consistent.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
